Stanford’s Shaw on Andrew Luck: “He’s like a vitamin–once a day he does something that makes you go wow”

It’s not like David Shaw has to say anything about Andrew Luck these days–the QB’s aerial performance every week is hard to ignore, and so are the 10 consecutive blow-out victories (dating to last year).

But what struck me from today’s Shaw & Luck availabilities at Stanford today was how much credit Shaw gives Luck for the Cardinal’s devastating run attack.

Sure, the O-line is performing at an elite level, the tight ends are awesome and the RBs are running hard down hill and all will be necessary for Stanford to keep winning Saturday at USC.

But Shaw has repeatedly said–and re-emphasized today–that it’s the QB’s role to read the defense before the snap, and then make sure Stanford is in the right run-play… and change it to another one if the read is bad.

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Luck never screws this up, by the way.

Plus, Shaw didn’t say it today, but it’s obvious that defenses have to be so wary of Luck’s pass attack that they cannot stack the line of scrimmage against the Stanford run attack.

—–DAVID SHAW, partial press conference transcript/

-Q: Where did you see the most meaningful improvements in Saturday’s performance?

-SHAW: We started fast. And you could say it’s running the reverse on the first play, getting everybody momentum. But it was beyond that.

Our execution was much better, speaking particularly on offense. Our execution was much better. Still would’ve loved to, that second time in the red zone, get a touchdown instead of a field goal, because we thought we should’ve converted that third down.

But we started faster. We were into it. The guys finished runs. The quarterback did a great job, as usual, getting us into all the right plays.

We were once again very efficient in the red zone. You hate kicking field goals, especially early. You like to score touchdowns. But we put points on the board every time we got down there.

Defensively, we did start fast. Then a couple of missed tackles—I don’t even want to call them missed tackles, I want to call them broken tackles, because that running back, he’s been good for years and every time we see him he seems like he’s gotten better. Polk is a heckuva running back and he ran through some tackles. He just did. He’s done it against everybody’s he’s played…

And Seferian Jenkins is the next budding superstar tight end in our conference. And our guys fell off of him. He’s a big man for as young as he is. Second half, we emphasized staying on our feet, gang-tackling, and we got better.

-Q: Did you see signs that you’ll be able to sustain this level?

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-SHAW: That’s the key. That’s the question. It comes back to how we prepare. We did a few more things better this week.

Now will we come back today in practice and think that we’ve got it and start taking it easy? Or will we come back and say, hey, you know what, we did it better, let’s rinse and repeat, so to speak?

Can we come back and do it again? Can we come back and be consistent against a team that’s going to give us a lot of different looks on both sides of the ball?

[EDIT]

-Q: USC’s playing better the last two games. As you go over their entire slate this year, where are they getting the most improvement?

-SHAW: Gosh, they’ve run the ball better. The quarterback’s been playing at a high level all year.

Robert Woods is about the best route-running receiver I’ve seen in college football in, I don’t know, 10 years. Just studying receivers as I always do, I mean, I did it for nine years in the NFL. The guy can run every single route and he makes it look easy.

But as much as they get the ball to him, they have been able to spread it around… They’ve been more balanced of late, which is what makes them dangerous.

Defensively, they haven’t been giving up as many big plays. They got beat on a couple big plays early in the year. They’re playing more solid. McDonald’s as good as anybody in our conference playing safety…

Just in my estimation, from the film I’ve looked at, they’ve become a more complete team than just a quarterback and receiver. They’ve become a good solid team.

-Q: Did you see Harbaugh and the other 49ers assistants who were at the game?

-SHAW: (Said he didn’t see Harbaugh there.) It was good that those guys were back. They should take a lot of pride in what happened yesterday. A lot of those guys helped us recruit the guys that are on the team, helped trained the guys on the team…

-Q: What sets Andrew Luck apart from other QBs that you’ve been around?

-SHAW: Every week I have to answer Andrew Luck questions and I’m running out of words. I’m running out of things to say.

I feel like the guy is… we don’t want to build him up too much, but the problem is, there are not a lot of flaws. More than anything else, there’s not a lot of things you want to change that he needs to get better at.

That’s the difference between him and every other quarterback I was with.

With Rich Gannon, he was unbelievable cerebrally and he could run. And you wish he had, gosh, could he just make the big-time throw a little further down the field? Good long-ball thrower but he had to anticipate it and all that stuff…

With Andrew, he makes it with ease, you know? You get tired of saying ‘nice throw.’ You get tired of saying ‘good read.’ You get tired of saying ‘nice job in the pocket, nice job escaping, good decision.’ And he gets tired of hearing it.

We get to the point, I try not to compliment him too much. Just move on, which is great. Because with his mentality, his next thing is OK, what’s the next play, what do I need to be ready for?

He’s always, don’t pat me on the back, tell mewhat the next thing is coming down the pike. What are we thinking third-down-wise, what are the best blitz looks, what are the things we need to prepare for?

It’s always, OK, let’s keep him focused on the defense. What is he seeing, what is he not seeing? Otherwise, we’re just watching him, like everybody else.

-Q: Do you tell yourself, the things Luck is doing are unbelievable?

-SHAW: All the time. Once a day. I said this to somebody the other day—he’s like a vitamin. Once a day he does something that makes you say, ‘wow.’ And it’s been once a day for four years.

Every single day he makes a throw that you just say, ‘wow.’ We move on to the next play, and we look at it on film that night and we say, ‘oh my gosh.’ Moving to his left, throwing the ball 30 yards across his body.

There’s just stuff other human beings can’t do, he does them and then just comes back to the huddle and says, ‘what’s the next play?’
-Q: Reaction to seeing Wisconsin and Oklahoma lose on Saturday?

-SHAW: It’s college football. It’s college football. Every year. The parity in college football. You talk so much about the parity in the NFL, because it’s changed so much in the last 15 years.

But the parity in college football has changed a lot, I would say, in the last five or six years. It just has. There are more and better high school players coming in to colleges and they’re not all going to all the big schools, they’re going all over the place.

[EDIT]

If you turn the ball over and you don’t control the clock and you give the team big plays, any given Saturday you could win or you could lose.

-Q: That could work two ways for your team—the players could excited because two teams ahead of them in the BCS lost, or you could use it as a warning that you could lose, too.

-SHAW: Exactly. We talked about it yesterday. Getting giddy or getting upset about what happens in the BCS in the middle of October is a waste of time. It’s a waste of effort, it’s a waste of emotion.

It doesn’t matter until December. It doesn’t matter until the end of November. We’ve got so many games right now that are important to us for our conference, that we have to play, and we can’t worry about LSU and Alabama and Oklahoma State and everybody else. There’s not enough time in the day to worry about that stuff. Because if we don’t take care of our business, it doesn’t matter anyway.

[EDIT]
-Q: To win 10 straight games by 25 or more… do you ever take a step back and appreciate that?

-SHAW: No.

-Q: Will you?

-SHAW: Ask me in February. It is what it is. We don’t think about how much we’re winning by, we think about every play, trying to get a positive play on offense. Every time it’s a third down, let’s convert it. Every time we get into the red zone, let’s score a touchdown instead of kicking on field goal.

On defense, it’s hey, if they pass the ball, we’ll get to the quarterback. If they run the ball, let’s stop the run. If they get into the red zone, let’s make them kick a field goal and not let them get a touchdown…

I didn’t even know about any of that stuff, again, until Sunday, I started getting emails and stuff. I said OK, great. That’s nice. Delete.

-Q: One of the few close games you’ve had was against USC last year. What do you remember about the end and your drive to win it?

-SHAW: Well, the last drive was the quarterback. He was phenomenal. We called a couple of those plays, he called a couple of those plays from the line of scrimmage. He got us down—there was a penalty early on, which helped, moved the ball down. But the quarterback was really good.

The thing you can’t lose sight of, their quarterback was really good in the fourth quarter. I mean, he got them down there to take the lead. And that’s why this margin victory thing… we could care less about that. That doesn’t do anything for us.

We’ve got to find a way to end up with at least one more point than USC by the end of the game on Saturday.

-Q: What happened when your kicker got an unsportsmanlike penalty?

-SHAW: First of my career. And I spent four years with Sebastian Janikowski.

[EDIT]

-Q: What do you think of ESPN’s “GameDay” being at the Coliseum for the game Saturday?

-SHAW: I think it’s great. Because I think all the kids watch it. They play their games Friday night, they get up Saturday morning and they watch “College GameDay.”

This is hopefully more than a once a year deal for us. I think it’s great. I think it’s something we can’t get distracted by, necessarily.

I told the players yesterday, if you play well enough, you get attention. And if you can handle the attention, then great, you get to keep playing important games late in the season. If you can’t handle the attention, the attention goes away.
-Q: You’ve said Andrew gets you into the right play 98 to 99% of the time. Does that mean it’s only once a game or so that you are in the wrong play against a particular defense?

-SHAW: It’s very rare. Very rare. Once again, it has nothing to do with how great we are as gameplanners. It has to do with the quarterback, when in doubt… if the looks aren’t clean, when in doubt, get us to a play we know well that we can be efficient in.

To make sure we’re not running a play into the worst look for that play. It’s what we did in Philadelphia in 1997 with the quarterbacks. Every single year in this offense, what you do is you learn as a quarterback, what plays don’t do well against which defenses…

Tim Kawakami

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think Indy will give up Luck for a first and a 2nd ( to be a first if we make the super bowl)?

Kommon Senze

No. It’ll take a lot more than that to get Luck. The better the Niners are, too, the more they’ll need to give up, since their picks will be less and less valuable. Using the pick value charts, alone, a team picking in the 20′s would need to give up 4 or more 1st rounders. Luck simply is not an option for the Niners.

dth

Both Colorado and Washington State stacked the box the majority of snaps against Stanford.